JOSEPH JURRA TJAPALTJARRI | TRAVELS OF THE TINGARI MEN FROM THE WATER SITE OF TJAMMU TJAMMU TO TARKUL

Painted for Papunya Tula Artists, Alice Springs, 2001

The Gabrielle Pizzi Collection

Thence by descent

Achille Bonito Olivia, Aborigena, Arte Australiana Contemporanea, Torino, Palazzo

Bricherasio, Electa, Milano 2001, p.91, pl.92.

Achille Bonito Olivia, Desert Art, Electa, Milano, 2002, p.91, pl.92.

Achille Bonito Olivia and Gabrielle Pizzi, Mythology and Reality, Contemporary Aboriginal

Desert Art from the Gabrielle Pizzi Collection, The Jerusalem Centre for the Performing Arts, Jerusalem, Israel, p.73, illus.

Gabrielle Pizzi Collection, Mythology & Reality, Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2004, p.52, illus.

A protégé of one of the most distinguished early painters at Papunya, Charlie Tarawa Tjungurrayi (c. 1925-1999), Joseph Jurra was raised by another renowned Papunya Tula painter, Willy Tjungurrayi (born c. 1932). The latter is credited as one of the Pintupi artists to develop the compositional template of place/site and connecting journey line that dominate the picture surface in the mid-1980s. A painting in this style by Joseph Jurra was included in the exhibition Papunya Tula: Contemporary Paintings from Australia’s Western Desert at the John Weber Gallery, New York, in 1989. And in 2000, an untitled painting based on the sinuous lines of ngalyipi or rope vine was exhibited in the landmark exhibition Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.¹

By the first years of the 21^st century Joseph Jurra had developed a distinctive style that grew out of the linear type of painting practiced by Pintupi artists to render images that refer to the esoteric teachings of the Tingari ancestors. Travels of the Tingari Men from the Water Site of Tjammu Tjammu to Tarkul is an early and outstanding exemplar of the style. Sets of undulating lines create a rhythmic effect, simultaneously conjuring visions of the heat haze of sand dunes stretching beyond a horizon.

1. See Untitled, 1999, in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales illustrated in Perkins, H. and H. Fink (eds), Papunya Tula: Genesis and Genius, Art Gallery of New South Wales in association with Papunya Tula Artists, Sydney, 2000, p. 155.

Wally Caruana